CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 7 - Paul R. Shanley, a defrocked priest who became
a lightning rod for the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church,
was convicted on Monday of raping and assaulting a boy when he was a parish
priest in suburban Boston in the 1980's.

Mr. Shanley, 74, was one of the few priests to face criminal charges
in the scandal, and his conviction came in a case in which prosecutors
relied almost solely on one accuser, who said he had repressed the memory
of the abuse until reading a newspaper article about Mr. Shanley three
years ago.

After deliberating for nearly 15 hours beginning last Thursday, the jury
of seven men and five women pronounced Mr. Shanley guilty of two counts
of rape and two counts of indecent assault on a child. Judge Stephen A.
Neel of Middlesex Superior Court revoked Mr. Shanley's bail and scheduled
him to be sentenced on Feb. 15. He could face up to life in prison.

"It was very difficult," said one juror, Victoria Blier, 53,
of Lexington. "There was no DNA, there was no direct corroboration,
and that made it very difficult."

Ms. Blier, who owns a window treatment business, said the jury was persuaded
by the prosecutor's argument that the accuser was credible because he
had no selfish reason to pursue the criminal case since he had already
received $500,000 in the settlement of a civil lawsuit against the church.

"I think the one central idea that seemed to be the most compelling
to the most people was that the victim had nothing to gain by pursuing
the criminal trial and everything to lose, because it was extremely painful,"
Ms. Blier said. "We tried to, but no one could come up with a convincing
reason for why he would pursue this except for a sincere need for justice.
He could walk, he could say, 'Listen, this is going to be too hard on
my family,' and, 'Sorry, but I'm not going to pursue this' and no one
would fault him."

As the verdict was read, Mr. Shanley stood straight and betrayed little
emotion. His accuser, who spoke publicly about his accusations over the
last three years but asked news organizations not to name him during the
trial, stood in the first row, rocking back and forth with tears in his
eyes and a smile on his face.

Now a 27-year-old firefighter, the accuser testified that Mr. Shanley
would pull him out of Christian doctrine class beginning when he was 6
years old, and would orally and digitally rape him in the bathroom, the
pews, the confessional and the rectory of St. Jean's Parish in Newton.

Mr. Shanley's lawyer, Frank Mondano, had argued that what Mr. Shanley
was accused of was logistically impossible given the layout and crowded
nature of the church on Sunday mornings. Mr. Mondano also argued that
the accuser had concocted the charges in order to prevail in his civil
suit against the church.

The jury asked only one question of the judge during deliberations, requesting
to see a journal that the accuser kept after he says he recovered his
memories of abuse. The judge denied the request because although parts
of the journal had been read at trial, the journal itself had not been
entered into evidence.

Mr. Mondano said he would appeal and asserted that the prosecution's
case was strikingly weak.

The prosecutors said Monday that they recognized what a difficult case
they had to prove. The case had started with allegations from four accusers,
at least three of whom were friends and classmates at St. Jean's. But
before the trial started, charges relating to three of the accusers were
dropped.

Midway through the trial, Judge Neel threw out a fifth charge against
Mr. Shanley, involving allegations that he forced the accuser to perform
oral sex on him. Then, in instructions to the jury, Judge Neel said there
had been no direct evidence to support one of the accuser's central claims,
that he had repeatedly been taken out of class.

"This was a tough case," Martha Coakley, the Middlesex district
attorney, said after the verdict. "We know that there were several
roadblocks in this case. They were many and they were obvious."

But "we knew that this was the perfect storm of the child abuse
situation," Ms. Coakley said. "That was because we had a priest
with a sexual predilection for young boys," she said. "He was
clearly an authority figure and one who was well-loved. We had a priest
who told his victims if he told what happened he would not be believed."

Ms. Coakley suggested that the main reason the three other accusers dropped
out of the criminal prosecution was the information unearthed about them
in the civil lawsuit in which all four of them received settlements last
year.

Indeed, in his questioning, Mr. Mondano brought out the accuser's volatile
home life as a child and his subsequent problems with alcohol, steroids
and gambling, which he said clouded the accuser's credibility.

Mr. Mondano also suggested several motives for the accuser's pursuit
of the criminal case. Beside shaping his accusations to match those of
his friends, Mr. Mondano said, journal writings and one psychological
session suggested the accuser might be an attention-seeker, someone who
wants "to be a hero," perhaps particularly to law enforcement.
Mr. Mondano noted that many of the accuser's friends and family members
work in law enforcement, including his wife and a friend, who work for
the agency investigating his case, the Newton Police Department.

Mr. Shanley had become something of a symbol of the clergy scandal, in
part because he had a colorful and controversial history as a long-haired
priest in the 1970's who ministered to troubled youths and spoke out in
support of homosexuality. Church documents showed that archdiocesan officials
allowed him to remain a priest even though they knew that he had said
he supported sex between men and boys.

About two dozen people have accused Mr. Shanley of abuse, with allegations
dating to the 1960's. Most of the allegations involved teenagers, not
allegations of pedophilia.

Also in the courtroom was John Harris, 47, who said that he was raped
by Mr. Shanley 26 years ago when he was sent to him for counseling because
he had discovered he was gay.

"Finally it seems like somebody has heard us and it turned out to
be a jury," said Mr. Harris, who received a settlement from the Boston
Archdiocese in a civil suit.

One of Mr. Shanley's defenders, Paul Shannon, a longtime friend, said
he felt "complete devastation" over the verdict. He called the
accusations a "preposterous story" that he said was "mathematically
impossible for Shanley to have done."

Many of the other priests accused of abuse have not faced criminal charges
because the allegations against them occurred too long ago.

Ann Hagan Webb, an advocate for abuse victims, said she hoped the Shanley
verdict would put pressure on legislators to change the law so other priests
could be forced to stand trial.